I understand where he is coming from – of course music has no rules but I’m sure it would be helpful to list at least a few ways people traditionally use it so he can experiment no?
Reverb’s original purpose is to make a sound reflect the atmosphere in which it was recorded in – a church, drum room, bathroom, etc. Basically, what it mainly does is add space to your sound but can also make it sound ‘far away’.
I had the same question too and here is what I have found some DJs use it along with some general use:
1) As with Echo/Delay, its usually a good idea to cut the bass by a) using the low-kill button if you have one, b) manually turning the low EQ down, or 3) use a high-pass filter (usually turning your filter to the right) – just be careful of the resonance making your music clip when doing this.
2) Works well with a breakdown where its predominately vocals/atmospheric instruments, etc. – since it gives it that far away feeling, use some reverb and a touch of delay on the vocals in combination with suggestion #1. When you bring in the next track without reverb, it will cut through and blend better, hence usually providing a better mix.
3) Same as suggestion #2, but have reverb on the other track as well and bring them both in for an atmospheric mix – then bring in the track that you want by gradually releasing the reverb (good to experiment with loops and other FXs as well while doing it)
4) (assuming you use Tracktor) Ice Reverb is good to throw on some tracks since adjusting its parameters gives the sound an almost note quality to it. Try sweeping the ‘verb to create tension in a track or leaving the parameter knob at a position and just turning it on and off to get bursts or spurts of reverb to your track.
……and that’s all I can think of for now. If you use Traktor, then you have Tape Reverb, Reverb, and Ice Reverb – experiment with those and understand how they separately make each track sound.
I hope that helped some and if your question was answered by the previous advice, then I hope it helps someone else haha (good review for me as well I suppose)
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